


Repeated Conversations

by timetravelbypen



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Coming Out, F/F, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Intrusive Thoughts, No Spoilers, So much angst, Yaz Gets A Hug, Your Author Is Having A Slight Existential Crisis It's Fine, the angst ends in fluff though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:34:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24030640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/timetravelbypen/pseuds/timetravelbypen
Summary: Yaz is trying to sleep after a day's adventure in the TARDIS, but her thoughts keep running away with her, going over and over a conversation she needs to have but can't figure out.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/Yasmin Khan
Comments: 14
Kudos: 48





	Repeated Conversations

Yaz had been shifting around in her bed in the TARDIS for what felt like hours. It had probably really been just twenty minutes or so since she last checked the time on her phone, but either way, it was far too late and she was exhausted from the day’s adventure (which had, as usual, involved saving a small town and running quite a lot) and she just wanted to _sleep_ but her mind refused to shut down.

Refused to stop playing variations of a conversation she was too scared to have outside of her head.

_“Mum,” she said, sitting across from Najia on the worn sofa in their living room, “you… you know when you asked if the Doctor and I were seeing each other…”_

_Her mum gave her a soft smile, took her hand._

_“I had a feeling,” she said. “It’s all right, you know. No matter who you’re with, or if you’re with nobody at all, we just want you to be happy, love...”_

Yaz rolled over, squished her pillow into a different shape, squeezed her eyes shut. But her command to her brain to go to sleep failed. It always, always failed.

_“Mum, Dad, I… I’m gay.”_

_The shocked looks on her parents’ faces dropped a hole straight through her stomach, and she wished she could take the words back, wished she could keep pretending._

_“No, you’re not, Yasmin, you’re just confused.”_

_“I’m not confused! I don’t… I don’t think…”_

Shift. Roll over. Shove the blankets. Again.

_“I have to tell you something, I… I like girls, Mum.”_

_This time, her mum began to cry, and all Yaz could do was say she was sorry, start to cry too, not that it helped._

Again.

_“Well of course, dear, we’re your parents, we suspected a long time ago.”_

_“So I’ve been agonizing over this for years for no reason?!”_

Again.

_“How could you do this to us?”_

_“Get out of this house!”_

Again.

_“Ew, Yaz, that’s gross, you’re a horrible sister.”_

Again.

_“So that’s why you ran away all those years ago… they were bullying you because…?”_

_“You should’ve finished running away if this was how you were going to end up…”_

Yaz gave up, throwing the covers off her legs, pacing her room, anxiety sending her heart racing in her chest, the beat pounding in her ears. It was always the same, always impossible to shut out once she’d started down this spiral, nearly always bad. She didn’t think her parents would really kick her out of the house if she came out to them. They loved her, and they were progressive enough, she supposed. But then, didn’t people who were relatively okay with the existence of queer people sometimes change their minds suddenly when it was their kid in question?

She didn’t _think_ they’d kick her out, didn’t _think_ they’d hate her. But she also didn’t _know_ , had no way of knowing for certain until she told them. And she was scared out of her mind to find out the answer. Because she couldn’t go back, once she did.

And because she didn’t know, couldn’t know, her brain did her the absolute favor of spinning out the situation, over and over again, handing her worst-case scenarios and asking her “now what?” And that was the question, wasn’t it? If she did tell them, if they did react in the worst possible way… what would she do? What _could_ she do? She didn’t make enough as a probationer to afford her own place. She did _not_ fancy the idea of Craigslisting herself a roommate (did people even do that anymore?) and even if she resorted to that, that would take time, planning. If she told them and found herself tossed out in the space of one horrible hour, where would she go?

Could she stay with Graham and Ryan? Would that be imposing? Could she bear the two of them giving her pitying looks?

Could she – dare she think it – stay full-time in the TARDIS? How could she manage that and still get to work on time even some of the days and not drive the Doctor absolutely up the wall staying in one place?

Could she just… throw her life on Earth to the side and run away with the Doctor to the stars and never once look back?

The safest option would be, of course, to wait. Wait until she could afford to move. Wait until she could support herself, until she didn’t need anyone to survive. And that had been her plan, but…

But then the Doctor had fallen out of the sky and onto a train car and into her life.

Then coming out had become not just a theoretical, not just something to get around to at some point, when she had a reason. It had become a ticking time bomb wrapped around something lovely and wonderful and exciting. Something she’d wanted had become something she had, in a more thrilling form than she could have ever imagined, and she hated, so so much, that there was something to taint it. That she was letting her own thoughts run away with her and ruin something so precious.

But she couldn’t help it. These imagined conversations were always there, nagging at her, lurking at the back of her mind waiting to drag her down.

Yaz scrubbed her hands over her face, groaning. She was so tired. Couldn’t her brain just give her a break for five minutes, just long enough to drift off, just this once? Maybe the frantic pacing had tired her out enough…

She sat down again, curled up in a ball under the covers, closed her eyes. She thought very purposefully of other things – the sky of the last planet they’d visited, such a lovely purple color; the last time she’d gone out for an evening with her work mates, sipping a lemonade and chuckling at increasingly drunken antics; the feel of the Doctor’s hand in hers…

_“How long have you known this?”_

_“I – a while, I guess?”_

_“A while? And you never said? What else are you keeping from us?”_

“Nope,” she muttered, getting up again, half-ready to scream or cry from the frustration of it all. Instead, she threw on a pair of socks and a hoodie and marched out of her room.

She hadn’t really had a destination in mind – maybe she could find some sort of incomprehensible alien instruction manual to read and lull her to sleep – but the TARDIS was a clever ship, and instead of finding the library, the winding hallways led her straight to the console room, where the Doctor was still awake. Her coat was draped over the railing and she stood in her shirtsleeves, adjusting some of the controls, waving at some wires with her sonic while her tongue was stuck out in concentration. Yaz paused at the door, not wanting to interrupt and have her hurt herself, but the Doctor spotted her over the console and looked up with a smile, so soft in the low amber light of the room.

“Hiya Yaz,” she said. “Can’t sleep?”

“No, I…” Yaz trailed off, hooking one foot behind her ankle and fidgeting with the drawstring on her hoodie. How to explain this? _Could_ she explain something like this to a thousand-year-old alien from another planet? Did Gallifrey have homophobia, even? The Doctor didn’t talk much about her past.

But her girlfriend – her wonderful, brilliant girlfriend – picked up on her anxiousness at once.

“Something wrong?” she asked, furrowing her brows. She stood very still across the console, waiting for her cue.

“I’m just… scared, I guess.” The second the words left her mouth she felt like an absolute fool. The Doctor’s eyebrows shot up, and Yaz saw her dart her eyes towards the TARDIS’ screens, checking for anything that shouldn’t be there.

“Scared?” the Doctor asked, and Yaz winced, even though there was no judgment in her voice. “Of what? Did you see something? The TARDIS is one of the safest places you could be, you know, although sometimes I do think that third library off the swimming pool might have some pretty large space mice living in it-”

“No, sorry, it’s… that was silly, it’s just, my brain’s being a bit stupid, that’s all.”

“Yasmin Khan, don’t you dare,” the Doctor said, and Yaz looked up, startled by the intensity of the Doctor’s response. The blonde woman came around the console at last to stand right beside her, carefully reaching out to tuck a strand of her disheveled hair behind her ear. “Your brain is brilliant, Yaz. Don’t you say mean things about yourself, all right?”

“I… yeah, all right,” Yaz replied, offering up a little half-smile. “I guess what I meant is… not stupid, exactly. The stuff in my head, it’s just… too much right now.”

The Doctor’s smile in response to that was small, and sad, and all too knowing.

“Now that, I understand completely,” she said. “I wish you didn’t have to.”

“Doctor… can I have a hug?” Yaz asked, squinting the inch or so up at her. “Please?”

“’Course you can,” the Doctor replied, already drawing her in tight.

Yaz sighed into the embrace, tucking her nose against the Doctor’s collarbones, relishing in the warmth of the Doctor’s arms around her waist, holding on around her shoulders just a little too tight. She smelled like sunshine and custard creams, and Yaz tried to let herself relax, tried to let herself be still, and there, and whole, and calm.

_“I knew that Doctor was a bad influence-”_

_“Mum-”_

_“Yaz, how could you do this to us? What’ll everyone say?”_

_“Sonya-”_

_“We know you best, sweetheart, this isn’t who you are.”_

_“Dad, I-”_

_“Does she make you happy?”_

_“… she does, Mum. So happy…”_

“I don’t know how to do this, Doctor,” she murmured into her girlfriend’s neck. “I need to tell them and I don’t know how and I’m so scared.”

“You don’t need to do anything you’re not ready to do, Yaz,” the Doctor replied, somehow understanding all the things she wasn’t saying, brushing a hand soothingly over Yaz’ hair. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

Yaz shifted just enough that she could meet the Doctor’s gaze; her hazel eyes were soft and filled with concern.

“Don’t let go?” Yaz asked, feeling very small, and very human.

The Doctor leaned forward and brushed a kiss against her forehead before tucking her head under her chin again, tightening her arms around her even more.

“I think I can manage that, Yasmin Khan.”

Yaz wasn’t sure how long they stood there in the quiet, wrapped in the comfort of each other’s arms. They didn’t speak; they didn’t need to. Yaz half suspected that the Doctor’s telepathy had something to do with her racing thoughts finally spinning themselves out for the night, but she wouldn’t have stopped her if she had. Or maybe it was just the thought of having someone to hold on to, even through the unknowns, through the things she couldn’t plan for, the things that scared her.

She didn’t remember finally falling asleep, but she woke up in her own bed the next morning, not quite sure if she’d dreamed the whole thing – if it had been just one more scenario her mind had conjured up for her to play out on a loop. But instead of being nestled under the covers, she was tucked carefully beneath a grey-blue coat edged with rainbows, a coat that smelled like sunshine and custard creams and the woman who owned it, who’d left her to sleep but had found a way to keep her wrapped up in her arms all the same.

Yaz closed her eyes, her head quiet for once, and breathed in, and smiled.

**Author's Note:**

> Things are getting weird in the QuaranTimes, y'all. Am I projecting? Who's to say, really? Assigning all our anxieties to characters is an age-old writer tradition, anyway, it's all good.
> 
> Good lord I'm too old for this...
> 
> Anyway, if you're in a space where you can't be fully honest with the people you're having to spend a LOT of time with right now, either because it'd be unsafe for you or because you're just a bit terrified, just know that at least one fanfic writer on the internet is with you and cheering for you, okay? 
> 
> Shoutouts to thirteengrins, halfbakedpoet, mag_lex, yasminkhxns, freefallvertigo, and I'm sure some other delightful folks I've forgotten to list (because my brain is swiss cheese and stress, fam, not because you're not awesome) for writing delightful fics to cheer me on through staying home and Thinking Far Too Much. Highly recommend checking them out if you're looking for things to read!
> 
> Hope you're all safe and as well as can be, and thank you for reading!


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